In the food safety industry it may be necessary to measure environmental data such as the temperature of food or the humidity of the environment to ensure that food is safe to eat. For example, United States law requires compliance with a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) program for the production and sales of juice and meat products, although HACCP approaches are also frequently used during production and sales of other foods. The HACCP methodology includes the use of monitoring procedures to both assess whether food is stored under conditions that safely maintain the food and to produce an accurate record of the monitoring for future verification of the monitoring or for investigating food safety incidents.
A common monitoring procedure in food safety is to measure the temperature of food and to create a log that will serve as proof that the measurement was made (for example, to satisfy HACCP requirements). To measure and log the temperature of food, a user may walk from location to location and measure food temperatures at each location using a portable measuring device. The user will log the temperature at each location, for example by writing down measured temperatures.